classics digests and reviews

“Plays” by Leo Tolstoy

“The Power of Darkness” is perhaps one of the darkest of Tolstoy’s works, because it depicts the most hideous of human nature. One can hardly believe that the characters are human beings, not some wild beasts, or those driven mad by the gods in the Greek tragedies.

C.S.Lewis might have been inspired by “The First Distiller” in writing “The Screwtape Letters”, as it relates the story of how an imp manages to bring an honest man to ruin through trickery.

“Fruits of Culture” is Tolstoy’s satire on the spiritualism of his day. The play was written to be performed by his own family and their friends.

“The Live Corpse”, also known as “The Man who was Dead”, could have been a variation, or alternative ending, of “Anna Karenina”.

If someone had filmed the family life of Tolstoy in his later years, it would have been “The Light Shines in Darkness”. With characteristic candidness, Tolstoy revealed the disharmony, tension and even turmoil in his personal and social life, due to the radical changes in his own world view and religious convictions.